TRUMP AND CLIMATE POLICY

In his Contract with the American Voter, President-elect Donald Trump’s “100-day action plan to Make America Great Again,” Trump outlines a number of measures he says he will undertake to create jobs and economic growth. I’d like to suggest three actions Trump could take to jump-start the economy.

In a September 21, 2015 appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, Trump said, “I’m not a believer in man-made global warming. I mean, Obama thinks it’s the number one problem of the world today. And I think it’s very low on the list … we have much bigger problems.” If this accurately reflects Trump’s views, the first step he could take to undo the damage done by the Obama administration’s vainglorious attempt to control the weather would be to reverse the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) determination carbon dioxide is a pollutant endangering public and environmental health (the “endangerment finding”).

The endangerment finding came about following a five to four decision in the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA. A majority of the Supreme Court ruled, if EPA found carbon dioxide emissions were causing global warming and global warming may reasonably be expected to endanger public health or welfare, EPA had the authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and indeed was required to do so unless it could provide a reasonable basis for not undertaking regulation.

Relying upon unsubstantiated projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, EPA determined carbon dioxide emissions from cars and industry threaten human welfare, and it thus began to adopt regulations limiting emissions from cars and power plants.

The endangerment finding is the basis for the ratcheting up of automobile fuel economy standards to levels that may soon rob consumers of choice in the vehicles they drive, either by forcing all but the smallest cars off the roads or, at the very least, making larger cars and trucks too expensive for all but the relatively wealthy to drive. In addition, the endangerment finding underpins various Obama administration regulations requiring utilities, oil and gas producers, and others to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. If these rules are not overturned by Trump, Americans will pay much more for energy and their supplies will be less reliable.

Trump can’t undo the endangerment finding with the stroke of a pen. Instead, he must charge EPA to demonstrate through independent, validated research that carbon dioxide emissions are toxic (they aren’t at any foreseeable levels) or that global warming is causing measurable amounts of sea level rise, increased hurricane numbers or intensity, the spread of disease, or other harms attributable directly to carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. If EPA can’t directly link such problems to U.S. carbon dioxide emissions (it can’t), or if EPA can’t show such problems can be alleviated or dramatically reduced by cutting U.S. carbon dioxide emissions (it can’t), EPA should withdraw the endangerment finding.

Withdrawing the endangerment finding would end the legal justification for a range of climate regulations. In the process, it also would end the ability of radical environmental activists to use the courts to impose climate policies on an unwilling public whose elected representatives have repeatedly rejected climate policies.

Trump recognizes to fully reverse President Barack Obama’s harmful climate policies America must withdraw from international climate agreements driving many domestic climate actions and cease diverting billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money from important domestic concerns to United Nations climate programs. As a result, in his Contract with the American Voter Trump pledges to “cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs, and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.” Trump can unilaterally cease the Obama administration’s illegal shift of state department funds, funds directed by Congress for use in other diplomatic programs, to the U.N.’s Green Climate Fund.

Finally, the easiest way for Trump to end the United States’ participation in all international climate agreements would be for him, on day one, to remove the country’s signature from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. Article 25 of the UNFCCC allows any state party to the convention to withdraw, without further obligation, upon giving one year’s notice. Withdrawing from the UNFCCC would cancel the United States’ obligations to all other U.N.-brokered climate agreements subsequent to it, because they are all built upon it.

These three actions – requiring EPA to justify its endangerment finding, cease diverting funds to the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund, and withdrawing the United States from the UNFCCC – would be great first steps to putting America first during Trump’s first 100 days in office.

8 Responses to TRUMP AND CLIMATE POLICY

H.Sterling Burnett is a radical climate change denier. His extreme views are completely at odds with both the scientific consensus and the majority of voters (of both parties) in the United States. His views represent the Heartland Institute, a propaganda arm of the fossil fuel industry in America. His proposals are absurd. If Trump tried any of the above, he would not have the support of the people in the U.S. or even of most Republicans in Congress. This is ridiculous and shameful garbage.

Welcome to my blog Howard!
Unfortunately for you, you jumped into a blog that is well educated on climate issues. I and my readers are in good contact with scientists that in many ways can show climate alarmism to be miserably at fault.
The IPCC has been given the mission from it’s superior organization, the UNFCCC, to prove that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 is a threat to global climate and the only threat we can treat, at that. Which of course is a preposterous starting point for science.
The IPCC does not represent science. It is a body of politicians and civil servants committed to produce the result their masters desire. IE. Climate scare!

It has been shown numerous times that CO2 does not hold any further greenhouse gas property.
It has been shown that our climate primarily is decided by the Sun. Natural variations are far greater than a small addition of CO2 can produce.

Your attempt to discredit climate realism to being a conservative or being bought by big oil is ridiculous and makes us laugh! One of the major contributors to the alarmist movement is the Rockefeller family with their various foundations. The Rockefellers of course historically known for their ambition to monopolize oil business. These days they seem to be set on monopolizing energy in total.